Homemade Blackberry Jam, the Super Simple Way

Low stress and better than storebought

and cheap!

Two main concepts govern most of my decisions: simple and cheap, so when the weather produced a bumper crop of fruit, there was no way I was letting all that free food go to waste. I mean, it was FREE! You can’t pass up free! With the plethora of fruits available on the island, I planned my strategy by season.

Late summer I started making morning trips to the blackberry patch down the road to fill bowls with those juicy sweet berries that burst into that sweet-tart explosion on your tongue when you pop them in your mouth. Yum! But there is a limit to how many bowls of ice cream piled with blackberries you can eat. A very high limit, it’s true, but eventually you need a break. But what could I do? There were still weeks left of blackberry season, and they were free! I had to use them!

The answer was simple – learn to make jam. How hard could it be? Ok, frequently those four words, ‘how hard could it be’, are a prelude to disaster, but when it comes to making jam they really do apply. Go ahead, give it a shot. I did it and so can you.

Let’s get a couple principles out of the way first.

Clean. Your jars or other containers have to be clean, your berries have to be clean, and when you’ve finished your kitchen will need to be cleaned.

Pectin. This is what makes jellies and jams solid and some fruits provide their own, such as berries.

Sugar. Sugar makes the pectin set. You can’t make sugarless jam unless you buy special pectin.

Acid. Acid, such as lemon juice, also helps the pectin set.

Stirring. You have to stir your jam pretty much the entire time you’re boiling it or the sugar will burn to the bottom of the pot and you’ll ruin your jam, and likely your pot.

If you want to can your jam for a long shelf life, you’ll need to set up a boiling water bath, rings and lids. If that last sentence had you reaching for the anxiety meds, ignore it – you can put your jam in the frig.

The process

Get your berries; rinse them to get rid of leaves, twigs and stray spiders. Pick out any fruit that looks moldy (important!), really green, or way past ripe. A few greenish and a few overripe are just fine. Measure your berries in a cup, just dump them in, don’t squish them. Remember how many cups of berries you have.

Put your fruit into a pot that looks bigger than you think you need. Your berries should come no more than half way up.

Add half as much sugar as you have fruit. 4 cups of berries = 2 cups of sugar, 3 cups of berries = 1.5 cups of sugar, and so on. You can use more sugar, but don’t use less.

Add as many tablespoons of lemon juice as you have sugar. 3 cups of sugar = 3 tablespoons of lemon juice.

For the mathematically inclined, that recipe is:

X cups berries

½ X cups sugar

½ X tablespoons lemon juice

Put a plate in the frig where you can get to it.

Turn your pot on low and start stirring and squishing the berries. The idea is to get some juice out of the berries and keep the sugar from burning onto the pot

When it looks juicy, turn up the heat and keep stirring. It should get very liquidy and start to boil. This is where you find out if your pot is big enough. As your jam thickens those happy little bubbles turn to explosive miniature volcanoes, turning your stovetop to a red-dotted piece of art.

Keep Stirring!

Keep boiling until the foam starts to go away, probably at least 15 minute of hard boil. Take a small spoonful and put it on the plate in the frig. Give it a couple minutes to cool, then check the consistency. If it’s very runny, keep boiling. Now’s also your chance to taste your jam and decide if it’s sweet enough for you. Still too tart? You can add more sugar, as long as your total doesn’t exceed the total of berries. In other words, if you first added 2 cups of sugar, you can add up to 2 cups more now.

Keep boiling, stirring and testing until you think your jam is a little more runny than you’d like it. Remember it’ll get firmer when it cools. If you think you’ve made it too thick you can add more berries, a splash of juice, or a little water and test it again.

When you’re happy with the gel, take the pot off the heat, and those of you that are canning, can following your standard procedures. For the rest of you, let the jam cool a little.

If you’re putting it into jars, go ahead and do it while it’s hot. If you’re using plastic containers, make sure your jam isn’t so hot that it melts the plastic. Fill up your containers, put the lids on, let them cool a bit on the counter, then store them in the refrigerator. Plastic containers can also be stored in the freezer. They should keep for several months in the refrigerator and up to a year in the freezer, if everything went well. If it didn’t go well, you’ll see mold eventually start to grow in your jars. Don’t eat the mold. It tastes nasty, but it’s unlikely to be dangerous.

Worried about food poisoning? Not a problem with high sugar foods like jam. That bit of lemon juice you added also keeps the bugs from being able to grow.

Too runny? Makes great ice cream topping or fruit add-ins for yogurt.

Too thick? Works perfectly as the topping for those peanut butter cookies with the jelly dollop on top.

Comments

Mar 1, 2013 6:06am

migreig
Great article. We get mountains of blackberries on our farm each year. They grow well on the west coast of Canada. Typically I just freeze them but since I have around 10 large freezer bags still I shall try this.

Mar 1, 2013 7:46am

JestMe
Frozen berries work great since they tend to start juicing up quickly. Measure them out frozen and let them thaw in the pot so you capture all the juice.

Mar 1, 2013 3:33pm

LavenderRose
Nice article. I got my hands on a ton of free pie cherries that are almost gone now, so it's good to know that I can make my jams with only 1/2 cup sugar per cup of berries, rather than cup for cup. I got frustrated trying to make jam with pectin, as it never turns out for me.

I ended up throwing a can of applesauce into my cherries and that helped them to set up great! Nice to know I don't have to do that with strawberries and blueberries.

I have a gluten-free blog that discusses making sour-cherry jam without pectin that gets a lot of traffic, so I linked to your article for those who want to know how to do it with berries.

Thanks a whole lot for writing this.

Mar 1, 2013 5:20pm

JestMe
Oooh, be careful. You DO need pectin with strawberries (but blueberries are OK). For lower pectin fruits you can add apples or crab apples. The less ripe apples have more pectin, but are also more sour.

I love the idea of adding applesauce and I never would have thought of that. Thanks!

Thanks for the link and I'll check out your blog. I'm always looking for gluten free recipes and finds.

Mar 2, 2013 9:35am

southerngirl09
I enjoyed the read, and the instructions on how to make blackberry jam. I am sure many people will benefit from this article. Excellent feature! Thumbs Up!